Israeli Defense Minister Predicts The End Of Artificial ME States

Israel's Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon is known for his blunt manner, and in an interview with NPR, he says that a future map of the Middle East will look very different that the one that exists today.... "We have to distinguish between countries like Egypt, with their history. Egypt will stay Egypt," Ya'alon, who is on a visit to Washington, tells Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep.

In contrast, Ya'alon says, "Libya was a new creation, a Western creation as a result of World War I. Syria, Iraq, the same — artificial nation-states — and what we see now is a collapse of this Western idea."

Which country in the Middle East is the most artificial? Which one was created as the result of a World War and is solely a "western" idea?

It seems to me that Ya'alon lacks the self awareness to detect the irony in what he said.

Ya'alon said that "Fatah violated the Oslo Accord on the day, the first day of the implementation",no, it was Israel that broke the Oslo accords on the first day, by continued settlement building and transferring its citizens into occupied Palestinian territory in breach of article 49.6 of the Geneva conventions now also incorporated in the Rome statute [ICC]. Also, he insists Israelis have the right to settle in any part of the "Land of Israel" which he insists includes the West Bank [Judea and Samaria], but will not allow Palestinians reciprocity by allowing them to move from the West Bank to Israel proper, here, he is admitting that Israel is a racist state, only to be inhabited by people of Jewish origin. In other words he is saying Palestinians may continue to live in the "Land of Israel" provided they stay within the bantustans the Israelis are creating for them, and most importantly, they keep their heads down and don't complain, otherwise the bantustans will resemble Gaza. What a despicable human being. All the Palestinians can do is to resist, using all means, including armed force.

In this article - http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/22/blinded-by-israel-visionless-in-gaza/ - Tariq Ali writes: "Few British citizens are aware of the role their own country played in creating this mess. It was a long time ago when Britain was an Empire and not a vassal, but the echoes of history never fade away. It was not by accident, but by design that the British decided to create a new state and it wasn’t Balfour alone. The Alternate Information Center in Beit Sahour, a joint Palestinian-Israeli organization promoting justice, equality and peace for Palestinians and Israelis recently put up a post. It was a quote from The Bannerman Report written in 1907 by the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and, as it was strategically important it was suppressed and was never released to the public until many years later:

“There are people (the Arabs, Editor’s Note) who control spacious territories teeming with manifest and hidden resources. They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the cradles of human civilizations and religions. These people have one faith, one language, one history and the same aspirations. No natural barriers can isolate these people from one another … if, per chance, this nation were to be unified into one state, it would then take the fate of the world into its hands and would separate Europe from the rest of the world. Taking these considerations seriously, a foreign body should be planted in the heart of this nation to prevent the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could exhaust its powers in never-ending wars. It could also serve as a springboard for the West to gain its coveted objects.” This speaks for itself.

It seems to me that Ya'alon lacks the self awareness to detect the irony in what he said.
Posted by b at 09:28 AM |

When you're speaking on behalf of a 'people' (who worship themselves) of whom, and with whom, you are one, it's as important and necessary to reject self awareness as it is to 'forget' that the "Middle East's Only Democracy" is, in fact, a Military Dictatorship with a terminal case of Kleptomania and a sickening addiction to mendacity and mass murder.

In today's Mondoweiss http://mondoweiss.net/2014/10/documents-borders-palestine there is an excellent article on Israels legal borders and how Ben Gurion connived at erasing them Eliahu Epstein the representative of the Jewish Agency in Washington sent a letter to Trueman here..Epstein’s letter to Truman

In the letter, the Provisional Government of Israel formally requested the United States to recognize the new State of Israel which was about to be declared in Tel Aviv, effective one minute after midnight (6 p.m Washington time) when the British Mandate over Palestine ended. It begins...

My dear Mr. President, I have the honor to notify you that the State of Israel has been proclaimed as an independent republic within the frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947.

I saw a guy at AIPAC a couple of years ago crowing about the 'end of nation states' and what Jews were doing to advance it, along with some mumbo-jumbo about who better than Jews to do it because they had been global nomads for so long.

I remember thinking, You want to remove everyone else's 'nation state' but you're in mortal combat with Palestinians now to have one of your own. Why?

when this bozo Moshe Ya'alon speaks, he is usually talking to a group of religious crazies who think they are the 'chosen one's' in an ancient land called 'israel'.. they don't think in 21st or even 20th century terms which also explains why they live in mortal fear of the neighbors next to them, some of who think and want to live by 8th century sharia law..

Ya'alon's statement is quite revealing in that it faces the reality of the imminent creation of the caliphate by the Islamic State. This is an authoratative assesment by an informed military leader. He even extended the caliphate from the ME to North Africa with only one exception, Egypt.

His only mistake is to think Fortress Israel can and will be able to resist the Sword Of Islam. He certanly doesn't think much of the Arab military's abilities except again Egyptian forces.

There is no way the occupied state will survive in the future. Countries are awakening and more sophisticated weapons are made in that part of the world now a days. Give those people anti_air weapons and watch them take Israel in a week. Times have changed

Shoes@ "more sophisticated weapons are made in that part of the world now a days". More sophisticated weapons are not required, the simple Quassam rocket, a piece of pipe with 4 fins tack welded on, filled with a mixture of 2 parts fertilizer 1 part sugar [the sugar rocket]and launched at the vital economic hub of Israeli commerce Ben Gurion airport on a regular basis, would be catastrophic to the Israeli economy, just one stray rocket which landed almost 2 miles from the airport perimeter was enough for the FAA to stop most airline flights into Ben Gurion, the Israelis went ape shit, realizing a closure for any length of time of Israels only gateway to the outside world would decimate the tourist industry and Israels economy. The resistance fired over 3,000 rockets most of which landed in the desert and caused little damage, how much more effective would it have been if those simple and easy to construct rockets had been targeted at vital Israeli infrastructure and launched from resistance cells from closer range around the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, then a real cost/benefit analysis could be made.Incidentally weapons experts have said the so called iron dome is only successful 5% of the time http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/7/31/part_two_theodore_postol_asks_is

Iron Dome is as fraudulent as "Israel's" imaginary nuclear arsenal. Every so-called 'interception' I saw on TV was a static, single-source, symmetrical, explosion - like a fireworks display. A collision involving two missiles creates an assymetric explosion and a minimum of two debris (plus remaining fuel combustion/explosion) trails. Iron Dome produced no such effects. It's a psycho-cosmetic stunt to fool a gullible audience.

Actually, the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted nearly 200 years, 1099 to 1291. It lost Jerusalem in 1187, but the Third Crusade, although it could not retake Jerusalem, restored the kingdom, whose capital was at Acre, until Acre and the remainder of the kingdom were finally lost to the Mamluks in 1291.

Ya'alon never struck me as being very bright (must be a prerequisite for bubbling up to the top of the IDF), so I suppose he really does believe that Israel isn't one of those johnny-come-lately post-WW1 states.

I suspect very much that in Ya'alon's mind Israel has "existed" as a state for 2,000 years, it's just that it existed as a state-in-exile for, oh, 1,930 of those years.

Just thinking out loud - As for the future of the Middle East, there is no telling how things will turn out yet. There are so many competing goals at play. The best, best thing that could happen - not just for the region but for the whole world - would be the fall of the House of Saud (between that and Israel crawling back to the '67 borders, I think it is a toss up. I think the former would necessarily lead to the latter anyway). That said...

What matter's most, I think, is the ability of the Resistance Axis and Russia to maintain the Syrian state. If the Resistance can be keep Damascus, Aleppo and Baghdad, and maintain the Beirut-Tehran lifeline, then they have won. The Kurds hold the key to this and ultimately, even with all the US investment, I think they probably have more in common with the Resistance than with the US and Israel (especially if, say, China came and offered more investment).

This collection of small towns that ISIS controls does not amount to much. If they want to create some bizarre state there - a state that only the Saudis could love - then they will have to make and run a state. In any case, with the west having to play a double game (fight them openly, but allow their closest allies to support them) they won't ever receive legitimacy.

The dark horse I guess is the US coming in with their "Syrian rebels" and a possible Turkish invasion of Syria to set up a "buffer zone". Either of these, if they honestly took off, could change everything.

Israel would like to be surrounded by puppet states on the Egyptian model. Which is why, I'm sure, Egypt gets a pass in this trite little prediction.

Israel is an outpost of the vapid American ideology. The problem is, the American ideology exists by being so far away from the regions it feeds off of, it can shield itself from the consequences of its worst actions by sheer distance. This doesn't apply to the settler state.

Apartheid didn't last for long in South Africa, and it won't last long in the West Bank. The wars we see today is Israel's last gasp at imperial dominance, just as it is with the US. It won't be long until China takes the reigns of the world economy from the US, and at that point, Israel will be about where Cuba was in 1991.

Watch it Ya`alon I couldn't agree with your 1/2arse prediction.Note: fool! its never all in the head & denial won't alter the inevitable! Israel is the most creative entity far to expensive in blood & treasure, to hang on too.

the neighbors next to them, some of who think and want to live by 8th century sharia law..

Their neighbors would have advanced as the UAE has since 1973, when the UAE was a bloody sandbox, a sea of sand, had we not warred or permitted Israel to destroy its neighbors. Look at Dubai and Abu Dhabi now. [The tribal creation of Wahhabism 200 years ago in Saudi Arabia is an aberration of the first order.]

That was before we bombed them, destroyed their cities and civilization, forced them into refugee camps and tents after making them walk hundreds of miles with their babies and belongings, or killed their kids and grandparents, and made them all religious in their foxholes.

Next time you or a member of your family gets operated on, remember that the same operating room tools (scalpel, etc) used today were invented by Islamic medical science 1,200 years ago, and no one has changed them since (including cat gut to sew you up). Christians didn't do this, and neither did Jews; neither group had the education, knowledge, or inclination to invent.

In fact, the entire concept of using law to govern secular life--formalized as Common Law with the Magna Carta--came from Islam. The Brits did not invent the idea. The priestcraft of the various religions always had some form of religious law to control and benefit their people for thousands of years. But the concept of a social compact that everyone regardless of religion adhered to in order to maintain societal peace and order came from Islam, overseas, and as the Founding Father discovered in this country, from the Tyendanoga Mohawk Indians (they occupied present New York State then) of the 12th C. In fact, our preamble to the Constitution is a direct copy of this 12th C doc, and it was written by a woman! It's known as The Great Something-or-Other of Peace, I can't remember. There's a marvelous 1930s historical paper about this that I'm not willing to plough through my library to find right now. (I spent years chasing this shit down.) We even copied their form of government, which gave equal rights to all, and installed checks and balances to prevent corruption.

Israel is itself an artificial state that owes its creation to the West and continues to exist almost entirely due to the continued support it receives from the West, namely the United States. And it goes without saying that the USA is currently facing the imminent collapse of its fiat currency based economy built around an unsustainable fractional reserve banking system fed by compound interest (i.e. debt).

When this long-predicted collapse of the US dollar does eventually occur (itself a mathematical certainty) and it loses its status both as the world's reserve currency and its main medium of international trade, the USA, no longer able to print its way out of depression, will very likely be in the position of being neither willing nor able to protect Israel from the consequences of its actions. It will be then, at that moment, that Israel will have to rely solely on the threat of nuclear war to prevent a resurgent Middle East from forcing it to return to its original borders.

Only if the USA cannot or will no longer support Israel's militarism might the country have to tone down its behaviour and start behaving like a 'normal' state. In the meantime, both Israel and the US are busy preparing to be in the best position when the economic collapse (and subsequent recovery) comes by creating 'facts on the ground' as by the speeding up of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the building of an extensive network military bases by the USA in the Middle East and now Africa.

That was before we bombed them, destroyed their cities and civilization, forced them into refugee camps and tents after making them walk hundreds of miles with their babies and belongings, or killed their kids and grandparents, and made them all religious in their foxholes.

It's always good to be reminded that the West's high opinion of itself is not entirely warranted and that other, non-western nations and cultures contributed significantly to what we are falsely given to believe are entirely western inventions.

What Ya’alon is implicitly referring to or bases his discourse on is a distinction between States that are, well just States (nations, self-administered territories, whatever) and States that are ethnically - racially (with a weird definition of race) - religiously defined (Israel is all three.) He is an ethno-supremacist, if you will. Israel is thus a ‘model’ for what a State should be, and countries like Iraq don’t conform - or so it would seem today - and should be partitioned or re-organised. (Lybia, Syria, what a suprise..) As he doesn’t want to refer to this dimension, he pulls history out of his hat, to muddle things up a bit! Egypt has a ‘history’ - no doubt in the intended audience’s mind it has existed for a long time, what with Cleopatra and the Pyramids and all.

Ethno-supremacism is becoming more or more acceptable and mainstream. The Saker for ex. shows strong tendencies in this direction and it is making him very popular.

When this long-predicted collapse of the US dollar does eventually occur (itself a mathematical certainty)…

Show us the math, please.

…loses its status both as the world's reserve currency…

This can only happen when some other country becomes a net importer to the world to take it's place…but they all want to be net exporters.

…no longer able to print its way out of depression…

A country can always afford to buy what is for sale in it's own currency, so the US will always be able to put its own people to work to avoid a depression. If it chooses not to, well, that's a choice, but it isn't inevitable.

Ireland joins Sweden and the British House of Commons to express support for Palestinian statehood.

A similar motion is pending before the Spanish Congress.
by James M. Wall
Irish Senator Averil Power stood before the Senate of Ireland this week which accepted a motion which calls for the Irish Government to:

“formally recognize the State of Palestine and do everything it can at the international level to help secure a viable two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

The government parties agreed to the motion “without us actually having to push it to a vote,” Power said.
Are you listening, U.S. leaders?
If you are listening, be aware, Ireland is way ahead of you in taking a stand for justice for Palestine.
The Times of Israel recalls that “Ireland was the first European country to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization.”

In support of her motion, Senator Power told the Irish Senate:
“By joining Sweden and other EU states in recognizing Palestine, we will make it clear that statehood is a right of the Palestinian people. It is not an Israeli bargaining chip for them to play in their sham negotiations.”

Senator Power, who is from the center-right Fianna Fáil (Republican Party) added:

“In doing so we will create pressure on Israel to pursue a genuine peace process that has a real prospect of delivering peace and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

In her speech, Power accused Israel of having implemented an “apartheid regime in the West Bank that denied Palestinians basic human rights that their Israeli counterparts take for granted.”
She added, “Without wider recognition of the State of Palestine, Palestinian representatives are in a weaker position at the negotiation table”.

MRW @ 31 -- Yes, a great job has been done in erasing Islam's civilization and it's contributions from history. To thank Islam for any part in the Magna Carta, however, may be too much. The Magna Carta (except for the Latin) seems completely in keeping with what is known of Germanic tribal laws reaching far back in time. Or maybe I don't understand what you mean by "the concept of using law to govern secular life…came from Islam."

The vast preponderance of the laws in the old Icelandic legal code that has come down in the Gragas, is entirely aimed at governing secular life (the penalty for example, to be levied for kissing a married woman -- reduced if the woman wanted to be kissed.) The oral code of the Gragas was thel law for centuries before writing became widespread in Northern Europe, and was based on old Norwegian laws -- the Dane Law of much of England -- and was well known by the time of the Magna Carta.

Plus. Many international bodies have done so, like the International Postal System (you can send a letter addressed to Palestine, which was not the case just a few years ago.) It also now has a country-code top-level domain name, ps. see wiki:

The European countries, 1, who now plan or want to recognize Palestine are playing catch-up, and acting under pressure of the confused if right-minded street. Lame and late.

It does, one hopes, represents some kind of break with US-Isr, some kind of pro-Pal. stance. But the two-state solution is of course a recipe for continuing the conflict. Obama is all for it. Israel resists for obvious reasons but knows the situation on the ground will be little changed in any case they will handle it..In a way, the two-state solution is simply a last ditch move to support Israel, and the European countries quoted are on board with that.

It may well have been, Ken. But the stirrings and manifestation of civilized life were in the great arc from Cordoba to Tabriz where Islam reigned, when you look at a map. Oxford University sprang up 100 years after the first university in Cairo (circa 9## AD)...even though the East Indians beat both of them to it by at least 1500 years. The East Indian university (think it begins with an "S", but don't hold me to it) was already in ruins by that time.

The ideas of the great conquerer Genghis Khan, who practiced religious tolerance and punished his soldiers with death for rape and marauding beyond the initial conquer, subsequently seeped into the consciousness of what we know now as Europe, and were the precursor to the Enlightenment. The 500 BC ideas of Confucianism and Arabic maritime technology were already being married in the sea trade routes bringing the Chinese (Confucian) ideas of the importance of maintaining secular order irrespective of religion to the west via Islam.

It's true that the Danes were the mortal enemies of the British Anglo-Saxons, but the Brits united their disparate people under law that prevailed successfully in Islamic Spain, experiencing a Golden Age at the time.

Noirette #36: the Saker is not an "ethno-Supremacist". The concept of the Russian World is civilizational, and explicitly non-ethnicist. A multi-ethnic empire (which the Russian Empire and the USSR were) cannot be based on ethnic identity.

One of the main reasons Netanyahu gave for not wanting to vacate the West Bank was Israels vulnerability to rocket and mortar fire from adjacent Palestinian territory, Ben Gurion Airport is only a few miles from that border, the Tel Aviv Metropolitan area which comprises within a small area most of the Israeli economy[75%] and approx three and a half million people would be exposed to even the most primitive of weapons. Therefore, so the story goes the Israelis can never leave the West Bank. http://www.defensibleborders.org/amidror.htm

"What do we actually give to Egypt? Between 1948 and 2011, the United States has given Egypt about $71.6 billion in bilateral military and economic aid. That's more than we've given to any other country over that time frame save for Israel."

I'm absolutely aware of the Roman influence, but none of this was created in a vacuum, and we have the victors writing history since the late 1700s. The Romans were certainly not enlightened. The orientalist and archeologist Stanley Lane-Poole wrote over 125 years ago,

For nearly eight centuries under her Muslim rulers Spain set to all Europe a shining example of a civilized and enlightened state. Art, literature and science prospered as they then prospered nowhere else in Europe. Students flocked from France and Germany and England to drink from the fountains of learning which flowed only in the cities of the Moors. The surgeons and doctors of Andalusia were in the vanguard of science; women were encouraged to devote themselves to serious study, and a lady doctor was not unknown among the people of Cordova.

Robert Biffault wrote in The Making of Humanity

“It was under the influence of Arabian and Moorish revival of culture, and not in the 15th century, that the real renaissance took place. Spain and not Italy, was the cradle of the rebirth of Europe. After sinking lower and lower in barbarism, it had reached the darkest depths of ignorance and degradation when the cities of the Saracenic world Baghdad, Cairo, Cordova, Toledo, were growing centres of civilisation and intellectual activity. It was there that the new life arose which was to grow into a new phase of human evolution. From the time when the influence of their culture made itself felt, began the stirring of a new life.”pg 188-189

Don Bacon@51, thanks for the video, but like everything else in Israeli propaganda they misstated UN Resolution 242, here is the relevant text; ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
Here is what the video said; "242 stated that Israel was entitled to NEW defensible borders that would replace the previous fragile lines, from where it was attacked" completely different of course, but to the Israelis, lying is such a habit.They even lie when it would serve their interests better to tell the truth.

@31 MRW..thanks for your numerous posts. i have a busy day today, so unable to comment as much as i would like. i enjoyed viewing the links you shared. i am old enough to remember the thought of traveling to afganistan, iran and on to india in my early 20's( the 70's), which wanted to do but never did btw.. i managed to make it to india in the 90's, but that was on another trip and a completely different time.

i get your point and am in full agreement with you even prior to your post! a more general question you might be able to answer in your own way is this: how do you put all of this in context? is it purely the geopolitics of oil and the need for war to control this, in combination with the byproduct (Wahhabism) that originated in saudi arabia approx. 200 years ago? or? i am curious about this step backward in these societies from what they had previously.. it will be viewed as ethnocentric to say it this way, but backward is what it looks like to me using the recent history that you've helped to highlight.

@37 paulmeli and @41 MRW.. i get your point... however i think it ignores the the fact the defacto world currency of the US$ is pivotal to the worlds financial institutions SWIFT, IMF, international bank of settlements and etc.etc. and exactly what it means in terms of benefits for the USA specifically. to use a good comparison of what it means, consider spending 1 hour watching this video on what it means for russia at this point in time thanks the fact they are being put in a position very similar to your futuristic views on what it would mean if the US$ wasn't the defacto world currency.. please consider watching the video which i had posted on the open forum which i think is very informative.

i am curious about this step backward in these societies from what they had previously.. it will be viewed as ethnocentric to say it this way, but backward is what it looks like to me using the recent history that you've helped to highlight.

It's really worth the $0.99 to download Robert Briffault's (Biffault is a typo above) The Making of Humanity just to read Part II. But the archive.org copy I linked to above is just as good.

What happened? The biggie was: Queen Isabella of Spain kicked the Muslims out of Spain in the 1480s (then the Jews in 1492) because she wanted the Pope to move to Spain. Isabella was married to Ferdinand. So she cleansed the joint of everyone except Christians in her effort to make Spain and of course Ferdinand and herself captains of the universe. Muslims and Jews could stay if they converted. The Pope wasn't living in the Vatican. He had a villa in Tuscany where he would screw and cavort in abandon, and she thought if he came to Spain that would cement their place in the Pantheon. Didn't happen, of course.

But what she did by banishing the Muslims was break up the greatest center of intellectual thought, science, art, and medicine, the world has ever known, and that had functioned for nearly 1,000 years. Briffault describes the scope and profundity of it waaaay better than I could. Cordoba was the center, but it was an arc of learning and science that extended across the Arabic world from Cordoba to Baghdad, Tabriz and Tehran. The Moors were in Cordoba; they were from North America. There was great tolerance in this Moorish world for all religions and nationalities. Everyone made a beeline for Cordoba, where they translated the Arabic Islamic science and medical texts. Christian monks. Jewish rabbis. These clerics carried the translated documents to the reaches of their worlds. Think Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo discovered their stuff on their own? Not a chance. It was Islamic science. Same with Fibonacci and Leonardo da Vinci. In fact, it was because the Moors sneered at the Ptolemaic view of the world that it changed in Europe after centuries of wrongheadedness.

So what happened? The Christian historians wrote them out of history, and attributed to Europeans what had been the discoveries of the Arabs.

Not ignoring anything I don't think. The dollar is the de-facto world currency because the US is the only country willing and able to run large and persistent trade deficits that serve (among other things) to provide liquidity to the rest of the world. SWIFT, the IMF, etc. etc. give the U.S. a club with which to beat other countries with if they don't play ball the way the US wants. I for one would be happy to see the U.S. lose that club.

That doesn't lead to the conclusion that the dollar will collapse if it isn't the reserve currency…the currencies that don't enjoy reserve status haven't collapsed.. Why would the dollar? Every country in the world uses a fiat currency system and prints money just like the US. So a lot of things will be different than they are now but collapse isn't one of them.

As far as Russia is concerned, they have the same option the US has, but is in a better position in my view because Russia has every natural resource it needs to survive and prosper within its borders and so can mobilize its population to make stuff that they then can consume…its a win-win. What may be holding them back is a decayed infrastructure, but it seems to me they can do it if they have the political will. Think of what is happening to them now as how we reacted mobilizing for WWII. For Russia, this is a war.

It seems like governments all over the world hamstring themselves with this nonsense that they're "running out of money". That's what bankers want us to believe, which is where all these myths originated. Money is the only resource we can't run out of, and the only real constraint is it's impossible to consume more than you can produce. Further nonsense is that economies can't survive without acquiring other countries currency, i.e. trade. Trade is another one of those choices we make, not a necessity. For every seller there has to be a buyer, for every exporter there has to be an importer, and we live in a closed system called Earth, inter-planetary trade is not currently available to us. It's a zero-sum game except for the new money spent into the systems, i.e. public investment or public purpose.

This can only happen when some other country becomes a net importer to the world to take it's place…but they all want to be net exporters.

US was net exporter until the mid-60's but US$ was world reserve currency since WWI. Britain was exporter for a century. Japan was BIG exporter until 2012. All their currency were, or still are, global reserve currencies. How to explain?

A country can always afford to buy what is for sale in it's own currency, so the US will always be able to put its own people to work to avoid a depression. If it chooses not to, well, that's a choice, but it isn't inevitable.

But there are unpleasant consequences. Germany in the 30's and Zimbabwe a decade ago, hyperinflation were the consequences. Same in Chiang Kaishek's China in the late 40's and Argentina in the 80's. And in the 90's, Russia? Korea? Thailand? Philippine? Oh there are way too many examples.

Sure, not all consequences panned out the same, nor all led to the same end game. But consequences of such monetary policies do ensue, some violently, but all end in long lasting pain. Many led to regime changes. Let's see how this US episode ends up.

@55 MRW.. thanks. you are obviously quite passionate about this part of history.. don't you think that all civilizations run a particular course and live a life of their own which typically comes to an end at some point? i don't disagree with anything you said.. i think it's also possible that what this great culture from the past that is still with us and gave us, also reached a point whereby it ended in a relatively natural way just like a person if they are lucky get to live out the days of their lives.. perhaps a similar situation is taking place as we speak with all the technological advances that have brought us to this point about to fall off a cliff thanks the many wars going on at the same time? i don't know, but instead of us working together on the planet to take what these technological advances have given us, many of them are used for such things as cluster bombs and etc. etc.. we don't seem ready to handle it all, and not sure if we will be.

i read some of the briffault book, the part you highlighted for demain in the link @50.. i liked the quote "...and never once allowed the currency to be debased".. to continue with my question on finances which i think are extremely important in geo politics, but often overlooked, do you think the us$ has been debased? it is so simple a question as to appear dumb. i will give you that!!

@58 paulmeli. first off, i don't see this as being about usa as a country, directly. there's an association between the us$ and the usa, but the us$ transcends the association as i see it... the federal reserve is not answerable to the usa gov't as i understand it. the 'federal reserve' is privately owned.. it is more complicated then that, but is taking me away from what i want to address here.

any collapse of the us$ could happen either very quickly or more slowly.. my guess is it will happen quickly when it does, but predicting when is impossible. it would be nice if the the us$ had the club taken away from it which it can and does use via these same ''international'' financial institutions, but it was a part of the package that was given it by the same types of politicians who are agreeing to the same types of decisions that are not in the world's best interests today as well.. the political class seem to be the servants of the powerful financial class..

what does being the primary world currency (us$) for the world mean? probably a lot of things, but not being the reserve currency doesn't mean the currency will collapse.. i agree with you on that.. however, i think the perks are significant.. having oil priced in us$, another result of the bretton woods agreement has created an undue need for the use of the us$ in any exchange involving oil.. russia and china are skirting this, and probably some other countries are working towards this too. how much of this is resulting in more instability in the financial system? hard to say.. warren buffett would argue that it is the derivative market that is the weapon of mass destruction here and i can understand why he says that too.

i would argue that the us$ will collapse at some point due the fact that it's pivotal role in the world financial markets today. i believe it has much to do with the huge imbalances and fragility of the world monetary system as well. the currency and all currencies were debased coming off the gold standard.. i am not a gold bug.. i just see this as a disconnect having consequences at some point in time..

russia will not have every resource it needs if it is put into being the next country that has to defend itself from this financial system that brooks no interference with it's desire for controlling others resources thru wars in places like iraq, libya, syria and etc. etc.. russia is next in line for the regime change.. ukraine is a step in that direction, by destabilizing it's next door neighbour, it is another sign of where we are headed.. obama's speech at the UN referring to the 3 greatest evils and including russia in that, is another sign..

i refuse to be naive by being willing to see where we are headed at this point in time thanks the supremacy of the us$ in the worlds financial system. even, if i only have my hands on a part of the elephant but am unable to see all the elephant, i continue to believe the elephant in the room is the us$ and the undue place it holds in the world today. it represents much more then the usa as a country to me.. it represents the powerful financial interests that are taking the planet on a rollercoaster ride that most of it's citizens would prefer not to be on. sorry if i got sidetracked and this is all OT to the thread content.. it really interests me and doesn't get discussed much. thanks for your comments which are more food for thought.

"I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that.

So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence. Increasingly scientists think there should be some regulatory oversight maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something Exceptionally foolish.

With artificial intelligence we are summoning the Demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the Pentagon and the Holy Water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the Demon.

the cross breeding between africa and europe has always being going on and has nothing to do with relegion.it is good for genetics.allowing arabs and africans to breed with swedes and norwegians is good for humanity and prevents in breeding.it also leads to a renaissance of sorts.

in israel that is precisely what is happening as jews from different lines meet and shake up the gene pool.this will be followed by a renaissance in jewish culture and thought.

unfortunately the same mixing up of the gene pool in europe is progressing poorly because of relegious beliefs and cultural apartheid policies of national front type organizations like le pen and ukip are growing in power
might be the great sperm migration has come to its end.all those blond swedes could be having a few dark haired offspring.yes,my child it will be good for the vigour

one day many years ago in cape town a coloured gentleman said to me ........"the coloureds are the nation of the future"

The 'elephant in the room' to use your analogy to Three Fakirs, is hot synthetic credit.
It has absolutely nothing to do with any currency, or G'Buggerers' fascination with US$s.

Hot synthetic credit swaps, collateral debt obligations, faked-up insurance hedge covers, that's what broke the world currencies. We are in continual growth mode, 5 or 6 billion people at work to re-inflate their debt bubble, and their wholly illegal QEn that followed, transferring synthetic gambling debts of The Chosen onto the backs of the world's taxpayers.

Eventually, several centuries, we will have 'repaid' the Chosen for their obscene looting.

Now get back to work. Your 3Q1040 tax is due in one week. Don't make me remind you again.

All world banks use fractional reserves and charge interest, even Islamic banking, which on principal does not charge 'interest', still the middlemen who obtain the financing do. In my travels through Islamic countries asking that question, smallholders pay 50% down to get a loan, then 50% a year later, and finally a 50% balloon payment a year later. That's 150%, not including the lost opportunity cost of the tiered payout. That's real interest penalty.
Microloans, which on principal don't 'charge interest', in fact, use local agents who do.
In my research to get a microloan franchise, the 'allowed' interest rate surcharge is 30%.

So your thesis that the US$ will collapse because of 'fractional reserves' is fallacious Gold Buggery. The US$ and all world currencies may indeed collapse, because of synthetic debt created by The Chosen as transferred from private gambling debts to sovereign debts to the backs of taxpayers. This is an illegal act, as the Original MoA pointed out long ago, a violation of banking laws, under international law, an 'onerous debt' which does not have to be repaid! Since the US can't even afford to pay interest-only on the illegal gambling debts of The Chosen, that fact has driven interest rates to ~zero, creating a much greater horror bubble of synthetic book valuations, pricing everything above its production value.

Your whole 'US$ Collapse' meme is driven by Gold Buggerers and currency speculators like Buffett, Soros and their ilk. Even if the meme d'juere only gains traction for a single week after they release it in their 'Click Here' spam networks, they still make profits.
The 'Collapse' will come, then, not by some mythical US$ banking default, but by a small reversal of some commodity bubble, like Amazon's -11% nano-crash yesterday, not the US$. Then other commodities will trip their breakers, and it will all come down, like Matrix, and it will rocket around the world in 24 hours, nobody will be spared the steep losses.

That outcome is not collapse, but everyone getting slowly, incrementally, inexorably Poor.
In the end, a World of Zeks, ruled by absentee e-Pharoahs and middle(wo)men Sycophants.
With a strong or a weak US$, makes absolutely no difference. It's just a fiat currency.
A fiat currency like the others, fluttering in the winds of the Looming Storm Coming.

Ha! ... Another ignorant and arrogant product of Ukraine and that questionable 900AD conversion ritual -- probably thinks Damascus was a temp settlement established by "Peter O'Toole" in 1918! Zionist apartheid Israel has a life span of about 120 years, imo. They are about 50% through the cycle and then, poof, ... "off the map" like a lot of other crusader missions. You've got Persia, Egypt and whomever run Constantinople on the corners of the triangle. And in between a lot of goat herders -- some of whom have struck it rich (for a while) until the oil stops flowing west, and some of whom think they are 'exceptionally' special. Yawn,...!

Interesting news coming out of Washington where Ya'alon has just returned from an official visit.

He met with DefSec Hagel - hard for Chuckie to dodge that one, I suppose - but apparently his request (bar one) to meet with any other high ranking US official was turned down.

It was Chuckie or nothin', but there is cable in your hotel room for when you're bored.

So what was the one exception? Who was the only other US official to meet with Ya'alon?

UN Ambassador Samantha "Crazy Eyes" Power, and only because she didn't get the "not with a 10-foot pole" memo until after she had already accepted his request.

Oooops.

That the Administration is pissed off with Ya'alon is not at all surprising - who wouldn't be? - but that they felt the need to pour a bucket on Power in order to underline the depth of that snub is rather extraordinary.

They couldn't have made their anger more transparent if they had shot his plane out of the sky with a Patriot missile.

I suppose that means that Ya'alon's stocks will now rise and he'll be seen as the next Israeli Prime Minister.

After all, pissing off Israel's only benefactor appears to be the one sure guarantee of advancement within Likud, and a sure-fire path to public approval.

The dollar is the world reserve currency not because of a willingness to run trade deficits or whatever johnny-come-lately neoliberal theory. It is the world reserve currency because the US was - by far - the largest economy post WWII, it had 90% of world gold reserves in its borders post WWII when gold was still money (in sovereign nation relations via Bretton Woods), the US dollar was more stable than any of its competitors until the advent of the euro, and lastly because there were more dollars around than any other currency in no small part to the IMF and World Bank - particularly important post WW II in the reconstruction of Europe.

If we look at this list - half of the reasons are not true anymore. The remaining half are the province of sovereign fools alone.

As for the US dollar's role today and going forward: every year that goes by and the US continues its irresponsible ways is another year towards the time when the $6T plus in excess US dollars presently occupied in the 36% (+ or -) of world trade will return home as the US dollar's role in world trade returns to (and likely overshoots under) the 12% of world trade in which the US directly participates.

I would note that US "self sufficiency" in oil accelerates this process as it means the US has even less influence on the oil market worldwide whereas before (and particularly before the euro) it was the by far majority consumer, from a currency basis, of oil.

Bullshit. In israel it seems Jew is only allowed to mix with other Jew. People get harassed by the govt and religious freaks if Jew marries Arab.
And some see mixing of light and dark skinned people as a way to breed out the whiter folks. However, racist Jew commands the Jew keeps the bloodlines pure, for this is the master race. Mixing is good for all the other dumb goyim cattle only.
And who "allows" Arabs and Africans to mix with Swedes and Norwegians? People marry and love who they want, as it should be.
Your comment makes no sense, except in a Multiculti hippie douchebag kind of way.

@65 ChipNikh.. most of the financial instruments you mention fall under the general heading of the derivative market and which i agree with.

@70 paulmeli - your question : 'define a us$ collapse'.. 'the us$ is a bubble or is in a bubble'. it could collapse any number of ways.. here are a few ideas - with a monetary system where oil is not denominated in us$, where the us$ is not the primary currency of exchange for use with the imf, world bank, SWIFT, international bank of settlements and etc. etc..

another possibility could be when financial sanctions are imposed by the USA on countries(iran, iraq, russia) for no good reason (leaving aside the propaganda which states the opposite) and are ignored by other countries becuase they can be as opposed to the present situation where they are taken up as they fear the consequences of not doing so..

as chipnikh points out, we already have a very unstable world financial structure thanks the many crazy derivative situations that have been allowed to exist without much of any oversight.. any one of them is capable of blowing up the system, much like LTCM or the 2008 financial debacle where the usa came in to 'save the banks' and screw the little people.. at some point this boom bust cycle will not be salvageable, or only in a context where a new system is created where the us$ does not play a central and controlling role in it all.

@72 Prey4 Justice.. thanks for saying in one word what i thought too..

@73 paulmeli.. why does the rest of the world need us$? why can't they function without the need for them? it reminds me of an addicts need for drugs... are you saying the us$ is a drug and the world is addicted? i would agree with that viewpoint!

It seems to me the "US willingness to run trade deficits" is code for a "need for other countries to subsidize US consumption." This fact is somehow dressed up as a favor to those countries doing the subsidizing. The current US standard of living...declining as it may be...can only exist if China and many other countries provide cheap goods Americans can buy in exchange for printed (or created electronically ex-nihilo) US dollars. Which end up as US treasuries anyway. In a personal analogy, such a phenomenon would be known as vendor financed sales. The owner of a shop lends you the money to buy his stuff. The IOUs you give him make his books appear strong and sound. Those IOUs have a value in the sense that other vendors accept them as payment, because you, the buyer, has such good credit. It all works out just fine until it becomes too obvious to ignore that you have no chance at all of ever making good on your IOUs. To delay the moment of that realization, you have a large number of paid enforcers that beat up vendors that don't want to accept your credit. You also run the system of payments and credit (SWIFT, IMF, Bank of International Settlements, etc.)The vendors themselves have an incentive to keep the game going because they have all those IOUs they hope to unload on someone else. Thus, a big wheel that should crumble from centrifugal force keeps spinning longer than anyone anticipates. Numerous complicated explanations-anything other than the clearly obvious and correct one-are employed to explain the phenomenon. (The US being the "only country generous enough" to run a trade deficit)

But eventually, anything that can't go on forever stops. When it does, a lot of people outside the US will get hurt. After all, it means the vendors did not really "sell" you that stuff, they gave it to you for free. The US itself will undergo a huge and sudden drop in its standard of living. The US might recover from that drop and continue to exist as a weaker but stable power in the western hemisphere. Or it might fall into ethnic and regional conflict. Quite possibly loosing the south west to Mexico. That is what I mean by collapse of the dollar.

@ 79, that is true, but...If they did not achieve FSD in the 1990s and early 2000s when the ballance of forces was much more in their favor, then I'm doubtful they can achieve it now, even though they still have the preponderance of power. The best analogy I can think of in Hitler in early winter of 1942. He had dealt an enormous blow to the USSR and was but a few miles from Moscow. But the knockout blow he hoped to deliver was just not strong enough. The USSR was still standing. And what he needed most was a knockout blow. That explains every poor decision he allegedly forced on his generals: refusal to withdraw from Stalingrad when he could have, a hopeless offensive at Kursk, etc. He kept gambling for a knockout blow, because the alternative would be a war of attrition he knew he could not win.

That is precisely the situation the American Empire is in now. It is still very powerful. It has an enormous military ESPECIALLY its naval power. It has a preponderance of international mass media to get its propaganda out. It has bases all over the globe. It has a network of satellite states that do its bidding. Most of all, it controls the global financial system.

But its main opponents, Russia and China, have massive land power, control over most of Asia, huge energy and other natural resources, tremendous manufacturing capabilities, a growing ability to counter the US imperial narrative through alternative media as well as their own mass media with a growing global viewership. And the means to create an alternative financial system. In addition, they benefit from a world sick of the "unipolar moment" and happy to see it come to an end.

That is why the US takes the risks it does in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. That is why it needs destabilization campaigns like ISIS and Prawy Sektor and color revolutions. To do nothing means the gradual loss of control to other parties. The US needs a knockout blow. Having failed to deliver one in Ukraine, it has to keep trying, even if every missed hay-maker punch puts them in a more awkward position than before.

"you never been to Israel go see for yourself all the different beautiful colours"

Me neither but as far as "Jewish" States go, it leaves a lot to be desired. The Catholic one is much smaller, a few blocks in Italy. For billions of souls. By that logic the Jewish state ought to be a hotel in Reno.

...
That is precisely the situation the American Empire is in now. It is still very powerful. It has an enormous military ESPECIALLY its naval power.
...
Posted by: Lysander | Oct 25, 2014 9:03:10 PM | 83

Navies became historical relics overnight when the HMS Sheffield ($250M) was destroyed by an Exocet missile ($0.5M) during the Faulklands War.
Since that day, submarines excepted, no-one has done, or will ever do, anything decisive with a 'navy' again.
The US's dozens of navies could be more accuratel described as high-cost, high-maintenance liabilities, than military assets.

The link above to the "War Nerd" includes this gem "The lesson here is the same one all of you suckers should have learned from watching the financial news this year: the people at the top are just as dumb as you are, just meaner and greedier".

Thanks. War Nerd hits lots of nails squarely on the head with that article.
I've come to think of him as the guy who took up where Smedley Butler (War Is A Racket) left off. I enjoy the frequency with which he treats the M-IC with all the respect it deserves i.e. None.

@90 harry. thanks for the article. that makes a lot of sense. i was reading another article at that site on some journalist from the crimea area circa 1996 or 98... fascinating article which some might want to read here. it puts the crimea area in a retro perspective from 1996 or thereabouts which i was unaware of..

Why govern the country responsibly, when you can deflect attention away from the country’s very real and intractable problems? Perhaps it is on account of the intractability of Ukraine’s myriad of problems –the mere fact that it is effectively bankrupt – that the only action available for the appearance of holding political power is warfare. Of course this form of national bravado only makes sense when in conflict with some other country. The insanity in the Ukraine case is that the “enemy” is its own citizens. I can’t help wondering how the populace (whether in the east, west or south) can remain passive while its political masters are steering it on a course towards complete disaster. And are they completely oblivious to the harshness to come when IMF loans (replete with its fowl society-annihilating structural adjustment policies) destroy whatever is left of their country. What is worse, IMF indenture or neo-Nazis running amok throughout the country? A Ukrainian version of choosing its own form of execution: death by hanging or firing squad?

The author is as ridiculous as he is stupid. Israel existed some 5000 years ago, a lot before all the current states ever existed. When Israel had its holy temple -King Salomon's era - it was some 1000 years before Jesus's Birth. Before all the current states in Europe and the USA ever existed...

Egypt existed all along with Israel since the Jews left Egypt with Moses and returned to their promised land....

You may not like it but Israel will be there long after the Arab Imperialist nations have returned to dust and ash. There are 4 perma-nations in the ME - Turkey, Israel, Egypt and Iran. Everything else is negotiable, and by this very nature unstable and violence prone.

I'm surprised fantasist hasbarists are allowed here. A miniature kingdom existed three thousand years ago, which was subsequently destroyed and ceased to exist for two thousand years. What is the relationship between a state that last existed 2000 years ago and the modern day?

Hate to burst your bubble, La libellule [and Northern Observer] | Oct 27, 2014 8:49:24 AM | @ 95, but your version of the history of Israel does not comport in any way with the discoveries by Israeli archeologists. Here is Israeli archeologist and Professor Ze'ev Herzog in Ha'aretz, Friday, October 29, 1999.

Prof. Ze'ev Herzog teaches in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University. He took part in the excavations of Hazor and Megiddo with Yigael Yadin and in the digs at Tel Arad and Tel Be'er Sheva with Yohanan Aharoni. He has conducted digs at Tel Michal and Tel Gerisa and has recently begun digging at Tel Yaffo.

This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, Jehovah, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai. Most of those who are engaged in scientific work in the interlocking spheres of the Bible, archaeology and the history of the Jewish people - and who once went into the field looking for proof to corroborate the Bible story - now agree that the historic events relating to the stages of the Jewish people's emergence are radically different from what that story tells.

What follows is a short account of the brief history of archaeology, with the emphasis on the crises and the big bang, so to speak, of the past decade. The critical question of this archaeological revolution has not yet trickled down into public consciousness, but it cannot be ignored.

Inventing the Bible stories
[...]
Archaeology was also the source that brought about the shift regarding the reconstruction of the reality in the period known as the "united monarchy" of David and Solomon. The Bible describes this period as the zenith of the political, military and economic power of the people of Israel in ancient times. In the wake of David's conquests, the empire of David and Solomon stretched from the Euphrates River to Gaza ("For he controlled the whole region west of the Euphrates, from Tiphsah to Gaza, all the kings west of the Euphrates," 1 Kings 5:4). The archaeological findings at many sites show that the construction projects attributed to this period were meager in scope and power.
[...]
The archaeological findings dovetail well with the conclusions of the critical school of biblical scholarship. David and Solomon were the rulers of tribal kingdoms that controlled small areas: the former in Hebron and the latter in Jerusalem. Concurrently, a separate kingdom began to form in the Samaria hills, which finds expression in the stories about Saul's kingdom. Israel and Judea were from the outset two separate, independent kingdoms, and at times were in an adversarial relationship. Thus, the great united monarchy is an imaginary historiosophic creation, which was composed during the period of the Kingdom of Judea at the earliest. Perhaps the most decisive proof of this is the fact that we do not know the name of this kingdom.

You can read the whole thing if you search for: << Deconstructing the walls of Jericho By Ze'ev Herzog >> Some bible sites have saved it. The links on my copies have disappeared.

In a personal analogy, such a phenomenon would be known as vendor financed sales. The owner of a shop lends you the money to buy his stuff.

China does not loan us money. There is no factory in China making US dollars; that would be counterfeiting. Only the US federal government can issue US currency.

China, and the other countries that sell us stuff, want US dollars. That is why they sell their products to us. They want USD. The day that the countries of the world do not want US dollars is the day we stop being the reserve currency. And our trade deficit will go down.

When a company like Walmart or Best Buy pays for Chinese goods, the money winds up in China's checking account at the Fed. By law, the USD cannot leave the US banking system.

So China has some choices:
(1) exchange the USD for Yuan on the open market and wire the money home.
(2) leave it in checking earning basically nothing.
(3) Buy Boeings or US machinery, etc.
(4) Earn interest by getting a 'government CD'. So it buys US treasury securities ('government CD') at auction and parks them in its savings account at the Fed.

The act of cashing in its treasury securities, and returning the principal and interest to its checking account is called "Paying Off The National Debt."